


Broken Hearts and Other Bumps in the Night

by Anna__S



Category: The Mindy Project
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-04
Updated: 2014-08-04
Packaged: 2018-02-11 17:04:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2076045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anna__S/pseuds/Anna__S
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You can have it all (unless you set your apartment on fire and break up with your boyfriend for no reason): the Mindy Lahiri story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Broken Hearts and Other Bumps in the Night

**Author's Note:**

> Set soon after the season finale.

The first sign isn't a spooky noise or a flickering light, it’s a smell. Just the faintest hint of something unfamiliar, like a flowery perfume that’s gone stale; something powdery and itchy, a scent that Mindy associates with nursing homes and antique stores.

Initially she thinks that as unlikely as it seems, maybe it's Danny. He's the only thing about her apartment that's changed. Leave it to him to smell like somebody's grandmother.  

She rolls into him, sniffing carefully, hoping that he doesn't wake up and find her sticking her nose in his armpit, because he may say he loves her, but she's not sure they're ready to survive that yet.  But he just smells like Danny. She buries her face deeper into his warm shoulder and he nuzzles his nose into her neck, making small, snuffling noises like one of the animals on those nature channel shows he likes. 

She decides the smell is nothing, just another weird side effect of living in Chelsea.  She rolls back to her side, but his arm follows her, snaking around her waist.  The first time around he wasn't a clingy sleeper, if anything; he drew an invisible line down the middle of the bed and expected her to stay in her territory. But now she keeps waking up and finding an arm or a leg or a whole torso wrapped around her.  It's more nice than sweaty, on the whole.

She often finds herself dividing their romance with a capital R into these two halves. Danny and Mindy part one: the Titanic. Danny and Mindy part two: the Edge of Reason. Or maybe the Electric Boogaloo, she smirks to herself, and then wishes her internal voice didn't sound quite so much like Peter.  

She closes her eyes, already falling back to sleep, and then opens them suddenly.  

_Somebody's grandmother._

 

***

 

She doesn’t say anything to Danny, not at first. She knows he’s all-too familiar with her particular brand of crazy, but she likes the honeymoon period they’re in. She doesn’t want to destroy the unexpected sweetness between them. It’s not until her hair curler mysteriously refuses to stay turned on, her favorite bra disappears, and she hears knocking three nights in a row that she tells him.

“Danny, I think my apartment is being haunted by Cliff’s Gram’s ghost.” 

He’s struggling to open a bottle of red with a wine opener shaped like a stiletto heel, which even she has to admit is more decorative than useful, so it takes him a few seconds before her statement registers.

"Oh boy," he mutters under his breath. “That was like, three months ago. You’re telling me you thought you were being haunted that whole time and you never complained about it? Last week, you made the whole office vote on which new pillows you should get!” 

“And see how great the pillows look!” she says gesturing at them. “But this is recent, just in the last few weeks – since around when we got back together, actually.” 

“Min, c’mon,” he says.  “I haven’t noticed anything.”

 “That’s true,” she says, brightening up slightly. “And you couldn’t sleep after Sixth Sense – which wasn’t even trying to be scary.” 

 “I slept fine,” he says, his voice going up an octave. He puts a hand up, as if to stop himself, and to end this line of discussion. “Besides she’s just a little old lady. What’s the worst she could do?”

 While she tries to formulate some reasonable sounding threat, Danny substitutes the red he’s been working on for a chardonnay with a twist-off top. She bites back something teasing, sliding between him and the counter instead, and slips her hand into his pocket.

 “You make a good point. And now I have my brave protector here to watch over me.”

A warm smile transforms his face. It’s the new lazy smile that she’s still learning; the one that makes him look like some distant Castellano relative who does yoga and has acquired inner peace. Something clenches inside her stomach, like a fist opening and closing. 

He leans into her. “I ain't afraid of no ghosts,” he says and hums the Ghostbusters tune.

She groans. “Lame, Castellano.”

 

***

 

She’s not sure if she believes in ghosts. But she definitely believes that _if_  ghosts do exist, they would identify her as an easy target. 

On multiple occasions, she asks Danny if he can smell anything weird, but he just shrugs and tells her she has a million scented products, her whole apartment smells weird. 

She turns to her usual source of knowledge, forcing Danny to watch a paranormal movie marathon, starting with Ghost and ending with The Craft, even though technically that one isn’t about ghosts, but let’s be honest, is a great film.  He retaliates by talking her into watching Field of Dreams, which is like four hours long, and as far as she can tell, just about baseball, so she’s not sure how that’s relevant. 

She gives Gram a long-winded speech about making amends and the benefits of cremation, but she gets no response.  

Morgan offers to help her with an exorcism, _because no ghost is going to take sexual advantage of Doctor L while I’m around_ , which she resists for two weeks before giving in.  She can tell Betsy is horrified, and Mindy suspects that she is behind the small crucifixes she keeps finding in her purse. Morgan’s exorcism ends, inevitably, in something spilled all over the floor that smells like a cross between cat food and cat piss, and a curtain on fire. 

 After stomping out the fire and physically kicking Morgan out, Mindy decides that really, the ghost isn’t so bad. It was time to buy some new bras anyway.  It’s fine. After all, she’s dating Danny freaking Castellano, who once made her top five list of men she would least want to have to repopulate the earth with.

Okay, he was just an alternate, but still. There are a lot of jerks out there. If that doesn’t scare her, nothing should.

 

***

 

Here’s the thing though; she’s starting to think that maybe dating Danny scares her. 

She somehow fell for Danny without ever noticing it; who knows what else is lurking inside her brain.  Sometimes, she can’t breathe, for fear that she will say something wrong, or that he will wake up from whatever fugue state he’s in. She’s still mentally adjusting to the idea that he wants her around more than he doesn’t.  Wrapping her mind around a Danny in love seems like too much to ask of her.

But maybe this weightless feeling in her gut, like the bottom is about to drop out, is just how love feels. She wants to ask Gwen if functional relationships make you nauseous, but she worries that the question will reflect badly on her.

 Twice, she considers telling Peter about the butterflies – more like bats, really, which gross – in her stomach, but holds off. She knows exactly what joke he would make and that it would involve the Mexican restaurant down the street, and she doesn’t need it. 

In the end, Peter’s the one who shows up in her office on Monday morning with bleary eyes, reeking of whiskey.

“Ugh, you smell like a college frat house,” she says, wrinkling her nose at him. 

He slumps into her chair. “Lauren broke up with me. Said we were in different places in our lives. Ugh, couldn’t she at least have come up with a less boring reason."

She pats him on the shoulder, trying to make something resembling a sympathetic face. “Well, if it makes you feel better, she’s right, you totally are." 

“Nope, that doesn’t make me feel better at all.” He groans and leans back in the seat, staring at the ceiling with an over-the-top despairing expression.  

"Peter, we're all really impressed by how hard you tried. But you can't go from you know, being a baby to having one." He nods at her grudgingly, still looking irritated. "You're going to find some nice, maybe even great, girl who is just as immature as you."

"Like you and Danny?"

She can't tell if he's making fun of her or being earnest, and she's not sure which makes her more anxious.  Her stomach twists.

"I mean," he continues, "you guys made it way past my bet in the office pool.” 

She punches him, as hard as she can with her tiny fists. "You should be rooting for us, not against us!"

"I am! But this way, if things don't work out, I still get something out of it."

"Ugh, don't even tell me what other people guessed. I don't want to know." 

“In all seriousness, Min, you and Danny are pretty much the only relationship role models I have these days.” 

“Oh god,” she says. “Peter, this weekend we got in a fight because I set my apartment on fire and used his favorite running shoes to put it out.”

He snorts. "That Danny, so high-maintenance, always getting angry about arson."

“It was a very small fire! And it was my apartment!”

She waits for him to tease her again, but he’s still wearing his sad hangdog expression.  Mindy knows that this is just karmic justice for his womanizing past, but he’s _her_ womanizer. She sighs and pats his shoulder again.

“Drinks on me tonight, okay? No, significant others.” She sits back down in her chair, spinning side to side.  

“Eh, you can bring Danny. He’s not so bad these days. Getting boned on the reg makes him so much less cranky.” 

“That’s okay, we could probably use an evening apart,” she says. “He’s seen me every night this week.”

His eyes dart up, suddenly alert.  “Everything okay?”

“Yup! Everything is A-okay,” she says brightly while he looks at her skeptically. 

She takes him out for drinks later, and she tries to think of a way to explain that everything isn’t good, it’s perfect, and that’s when things tend to fall apart:  when somebody moves to Haiti or falls in love with the coffee barista or cheats on you with every woman in Manhattan. 

She buys him another round instead, and in between shots of fireball, he mumbles that she’s gonna be fine, that she’s going to figure it all out, if she doesn’t fuck it up too much.

 _Yes_ , she thinks, _that’s the movie they will write about my life.  You can have it all (unless you set your apartment on fire and break up with your boyfriend for no reason): the Mindy Lahiri story._

 

***

 

The next morning, she's running almost half an hour late, a foul mixture of cinnamon and tequila still in her mouth.

 The elevator is about to close, when a vaguely familiar loafer wedges through the crack between the doors, followed by a very familiar ex-boyfriend.  His expression immediately turns when he sees her, his whole face pinching inwards like he's eaten the world's biggest lemon. 

 "Err, good morning," Mindy says, swallowing a groan, trying to put on her brightest smile.  He glowers at her and her smile dims.  

 She is contemplating how out of bounds it would be to ask Cliff what perfume his grandmother used to wear when there's a sudden clang.  The elevator shakes and comes to a bone-grinding stop between the second and third floor.

 "You've gotta be kidding me," Cliff says.  He pushes the emergency button but there’s no response. Mindy doesn’t even bother to check her cellphone. She’s sent three letters to the building manager regarding the lack of service in the elevator, and after today, she, or more likely Betsy, will be writing another one. 

 She exhales loudly, sliding to the floor.  In movies, people always seem to sit on the floor in these type of situations, and she’s not sure if that’s an actual safety precaution or not, but she’s going to play it safe. Cliff continues to stand, his arms crossed, his jaw working furiously. He pushes the emergency button again.

“Can you sit? It’s kind of weirding me out to have you stand over me.”

“Sure, Mindy, whatever you want, of course, whatever would be best for you. I wouldn't want to make you uncomfortable."

 To her surprise, despite his vicious tone, he sits down next to her. In another lifetime, this could’ve been a very romantic moment, she muses.  She looks at his face, searching for a spark of something, but all she feels is guilt. 

With a jolt, she realizes that in her pop culture hunt through ghost lore, she missed the most obvious solution.   

“You know, Cliff, I’m really sorry for what happened.”

He laughs.

"Which thing are you apologizing for? Cheating on me, telling me that you were cheating on me at my grandmother's funeral, or setting my grandmother's coffin on fire?"

"Err," she stumbles, but rights herself by reminding herself that at least half of those things were sort of justified. Besides, they barely even cheated. "For all of them I guess. You were a good guy, and you didn’t deserve that. The thing between me and Danny, it just kind of came out of nowhere, and I maybe didn’t handle it as well as I could have.” 

“Well, it’s been a good pick-up line. I’ve gotten like ten dates out of that story.”  His voice isn’t friendly exactly but it’s less sharp. She decides it’s a good sign.

“So, totally worth it then,” she says.  

"How are you and what's-his-face doing?"

"Great! Well, we weren't so great for awhile, but now we're great. Good. Fine, almost totally fine,” she amends. 

"Trouble in paradise?”

"No trouble. Just, I've never dated anybody this long before, not seriously anyway. He's always around.  It's weird.  And I have so many dresses I never get to wear anywhere."

"That sounds like a good kind of weird to me, Mindy."

She smiles at him, suddenly feeling shy, and hopes that Danny never, ever knows she was asking Cliff for romantic advice. "I know, just figuring it all out I guess.  I’ve never actually gotten everything I ever wanted before." Some fleeting emotion crosses his face and she quickly adds, “that was probably a strange thing to say to you.”

"Most of the things you say are," he says but his voice lacks its earlier bite.    

"Can I ask you something about your grandmother?"

Cliff lets out something between a laugh and a sigh. "Sure, Mindy. Why not."  

"Did she have any unfinished business? Long lost lovers she never got closure with? Maybe a secret daughter?"

He stares at her, his eyebrows creased together.  "I changed my mind, I'm not answering that."  

There is a quiet, but unnerving creak and the elevator starts to move again.  They make it one flight before the door opens and Brendan Deslaurier gets on. Mindy stares up at the ceiling and wonders what exactly God is punishing her for.

 

***

 

After her cease-fire with Cliff, she is confident that Grams will be gone when she gets home.  Mindt had, to be fair, done wrong by her grandson.  But he was fine; apparently he was telling his sad tale to every ass model in town. 

When she gets home from work there is nothing obviously out of place.  Her pink bowl is exactly where she left it, crusted with day-old cereal.  No lights are on.  She lets out a deep breath. 

As she drops her bag on the ground, a sudden gust of air whips her hair back.  There’s a low rustling, whispering sound, like a snake slithering through the wall. Mindy screams and sprints to her bed.

She grabs the kitchen knife she keeps in her nightstand, grateful that Danny never actually moved it into the kitchen, like he threatened.  She shrinks against her headboard, wraps the blankets around her knees, clutching the knife between both hands.  A cold shiver runs through her. 

And that’s how Danny finds her, one hour later. 

He’s working on his tie.  He stops in the doorway, eyeing the knife. “Uh, do I want to know?”

“I think Grams wants us to break up. I think she hates us,” she says.  Mindy knows she sounds a little crazy, but she’s starting to wonder if maybe she is a little crazy.

Danny sits down on the bed next to her and gently, but firmly takes the knife away.  

“Min, should I be reading something into this whole ghost thing?”

The creakiness of his voice is strangely comforting. She takes his hand, running her fingers through his, enjoying how small and safe it makes her feel.  

“It’s not in my head!” she says, then ticks off a list of unexplained incidents: the smells, the flickering lights, the sounds, the missing articles of clothing.

“There are a million explanations for all of those. Maybe you have a new neighbor who uses a lot of candles, or the building is having wiring problems. And you’ve been losing things for the whole time I’ve known you. Remember when you lost that sweater in your own locker for two years? Are you sure there’s nothing else going on? “

“I don’t know,” she admits.  “Things have just been really great at work lately.  And I’m really happy with you.” She hesitates, and he squeezes her hand. “I’m just not sure what I’m supposed to do with myself. Or when I should start trusting myself, or trusting you. It's like I spent fifteen years running a marathon and then it turned out at the end of the marathon, there's a ski race – and I don't know how to ski Danny! I'm Indian! I'm not made for the cold.” 

"Stop panicking," he says. She can tell that he wants to shake her. "Tell me what you're talking about. I thought we were past this. Have you changed your mind about us?”

His voice is laced with hurt and she feels like an asshole. He crosses and uncrosses his arms. She knows that he is only a few wrong words away from making the switch from vulnerability to anger. The best defense is a good offense and in Danny's case the best offense is total annihilation.

She grabs both of his hands. "No, no, no. No." On the last _no_ , he exhales sharply.  He doesn’t move, but she can feel the change in his demeanor, as if he's decided this is a freak-out instead of a break-up.  She finds this reassuring; if she was going to break up with him, he would probably know. 

"I just feel like I'm a bull in a china shop, all the time.  Like every time I'm in your apartment, I'm going to break something. Like I'm going to break us."

He laughs. "Min, you literally break things in my apartment all the time.  You brought a prostitute there once.  Just, do what you've always done."

"Torment you?" 

“Just be yourself,” he says, smirking at her now. 

“I realized at some point that I don’t know how to be your girlfriend.” She gestures back and forth between them. “I don’t know what this is supposed to look like.”

“What do your movies tell you?”

“They usually end.” Mindy admits. If she ever gets a chance to meet Nora Ephron in the after life, she is going to get a piece of her mind. “So what comes next?” she asks.

His mouth crooks up into the familiar half-smile that seems pulled from him against his will, like she amuses him despite himself.  He brushes a strand of hair away from her face and tilts her chin up.  

"Everything," he says.   

 

***

 

From time to time, a cold draft in the kitchen still sends goosebumps running down her arms.  The smell lingers for another few weeks, and the bathroom lights continue to flicker, until she calls an electrician. 

Sometimes a draft is just a draft. Sometimes, things really are that simple.

 

 

**

 

**Author's Note:**

> I keep thinking I’m done writing about these two idiots. And then, somehow, I never am.


End file.
